Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant
Islam

Onetime physics student,
Mohammad Hashemi, certain the Marine guards would shoot to kill, said the
Muslim prayer for martyrdom on 4 November 1979 and set off to lead a four-day
"set in" of university students inside the American Embassy in Tehran. No one
stopped them when they stormed the compound. Then the Ayatollah encouraged them
to stay, and 444 days later on 20 January 1981, 52 hostages went home. Guests
of the Ayatollah tells the story from both sides, from start to finish.

In addition to utilizing
contemporaneous newspaper and TV accounts—which he sharply critiques—author
Mark Bowden makes full use of material he gathered during five years of
interviewing former hostages and former hostage takers, members of the
governments on both sides, and participants in the failed attempt to rescue the
hostages. The result is a forceful, stimulating, yet often disturbing, account
that explains why the onetime Iranian students viewed United States as the
Great Satan, what they thought they could accomplish, why both sides were
surprised in different ways, and what went on in Iran and Washington during
those 444 days.

The book is divided into
five parts and an epilogue. Part one deals with the planning, occupation,
initial interrogations and consequent unexpected events on both sides. The
embassy in Tehran had been occupied briefly earlier in the year, and the
hostages at first assumed the occupation would be more of the same. And in
fact, the leaders—including the current president of Iran, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad—had not prepared for a prolonged stay nor had they informed the
country's political and religious authorities beforehand of their intent. In
the initial confusion, several of the embassy staff and visitors avoided
capture and Bowden tells how, with the help of the CIA and the Canadians, they
made their way home. But overall, it is surprising how rapidly administrative,
logistical, and the initially conflicting political issues were dealt with. The
routine that was established quickly included hostage identification, interrogation,
feeding, and housing.

Parts two and three cover
the initial Western press coverage, the reactions at home, the routines the
hostages adopted, and how they dealt with periods of blind-folded isolation
between interrogations. It is here that we first learn of the students, calling
the embassy a "den of spies," one reason given for holding the hostages. They
truly believed that the foreign services officers were just spies under cover,
and that made life more difficult for genuine foreign service officers. The
captors quickly realized the power of television to grab world attention and
began allowing radical American pro-Iranian activists to call and visit the
hostages in hopes of influencing US public opinion. Bowden goes on to explain
that while this was going on the first of several CIA agents were inserted into
Tehran as plans for the unfortunate hostage rescue attempt took shape. This he,
too, describes in all of its sorry detail.

The initial group of hostages was reduced by 13 when all but two of the women and African-Americans
were released. At the same time, the Ayatollah announced that the remaining 53
would be tried as spies, although it never happened. After one more was released
because he had a serious health problem, 52 stayed the course involuntarily.
Three of them were held at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, where they had a
telephone line to the State Department for much of the time, but even their
confinement took its toll. In an unusual form of rebellion, Bowden tells how
one took to wandering the ministry building in the nude at night in search of
escape routes.

The officers and staff at the embassy included only three fluent in Farsi. From their exchanges with the
interrogators, one gets a sense of the Iranian ignorance in Western matters,
even though several had been educated and lived in the United States. Bowden's
characterization of Nilufar Ebtekar—as "screaming Mary"—who became the
spokeswoman for the hostage takers, is a fine example. She had grown up in
Philadelphia and spoke English with an American accent. After berating the
United States for "the inhuman, racist decision" to drop the atomic bomb on
Japan, she was shocked to learn that Japan had started the war by bombing Pearl
Harbor. Later she asked Bowden to help find an agent for the book she planned
to write.

Three of the embassy hostages were CIA officers. Bowden interviewed the two who are still
alive. Tom Ahern, in the only interview he has given on the subject, tells how
he had been chief of station just four months at the time of the takeover and
the error that led to his exposure as CIA. William Daugherty's story was the
subject of a memoir, In the Shadow of the Ayatollah: A CIA Hostage in Iran but Bowden fills in blanks and adds names where Daugherty could not, as for
example the name of the soldier who revealed Daugherty's CIA affiliation.[1] It was
Daugherty who told Ebtekar about Pearl Harbor. The treatment these officers endured,
the devices they employed to deal with their interrogators despite physical
abuse, and the clever schemes they adopted to cope with solitary confinement,
is essential but often not pleasant reading.

Guests of the Ayatollah also attempts to answer the
question that arises in any discussion of the embassy takeover: why did they do
it? Bowden argues that at the outset, the student radicals really believed that
the entire embassy was in fact a "den of spies" who sought to restore the
deposed shah as had happened in 1953. This conviction grew, he suggests, when
the shah was allowed into the United States for cancer treatment and when
President Carter refused to return him to Tehran. Understanding this as
anything but a direct insult to Islam was beyond the radicals. The intensity of
the student movement was unexpected, Bowden explains, because, at the shah's
insistence, "For years, little intelligence was collected from Iran that did
not originate with the shah's own regime." In other words the CIA was dependent
on SAVAK, the shah's secret service, and had a distorted picture of Iranian
political reality.

In part five, Guests of the Ayatollah concentrates on the gradual realization of Iran's rulers that holding the
hostages was doing more economic, financial, and political harm than good. At
several points during the crisis secret talks had been held to resolve the
issue, but Iran always demanded too much. Bowden tells how the Ayatollah
rationalized dealing with the Great Satan and describes the negotiations that
led to the hostages' release, adding that all the hostage takers were convinced
that the decision to wait until President Carter was out of office was a
deliberate insult to the man who helped the shah. (629) In the epilogue, Bowden
describes what has happened to the hostages since their return to the United
States. Guests of the Ayatollah is a superb book that shows how
Americans dealt with a national historical humiliation at the hands of Muslims
of a mediocre mindset and emerged the stronger for the experience.

Current

Al
Qaeda In Europe: The New Battleground of International Jihad

The Investigative Project is a private organization
that monitors terrorist activities throughout the world. It is headed by
terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who wrote the foreword for this book. Author
Lorenzo Vidino, a lawyer who speaks seven languages, is Emerson's deputy. Al
Qaeda In Europe has four parts. The first and most disturbing, describes
the lengthy development, recruitment, education, training, and financing of
radical Islamic cells and networks throughout Europe. Perhaps the most
unsettling aspect of this portion is the discussion of the very successful,
albeit cynical, al-Qa'ida policy of invoking the power of the converted in
recruiting disaffected Christians and Muslims with passports to their cause.
These super adherents reduce the potential utility of profiling techniques in preventing
them from achieving martyrdom. Vidino also documents the work of radical groups
that motivate the faithful in the mosques: "only a violent jihad will bring
about the dream of making the word of Allah the only religion in the world." In
Britain, the group al-Muhajiroun, seeks "to turn Britain into an Islamic
country following a Taliban-style interpretation of Islamic law." (24)

The other three parts of the book are devoted to
case studies of the major Islamic networks and their operations in Europe and
the Middle East. Included are the Algerian network and its recin plot;
al-Qa'ida in Italy, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The book concludes with analysis of
the Madrid bombings and the Dutch Van Gogh assassination. Undiscouraged by
setbacks, these groups take a long view, says Vidino. They justify their
barbaric acts as an "Islamic rite of revenge." (326) The future for radical
Islamists in Europe, if the past is prologue, is optimistic. Vidino argues
persuasively that Europe no longer has to import terrorists; it is "growing its
own." (359) Finally he warns that events in Europe have a way of affecting the
United States. Well documented, well told, and alarming.

Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion
and Occupation of Iraq

COBRA I was the codename given to General Patton's
successful breakout thrust from France toward Germany during World War II.
COBRA II is a detailed account of the equally successful thrust that took
Baghdad in 2003. While the majority of the book focuses on that operation,
significant portions are devoted to the invasion planning and follow-up, which
the authors find deeply flawed. They name names, describe incredible
bureaucratic infighting, identify errors in strategic guidance, and conclude
that civilian decision making has no place in deciding the details involved in
executing tactical military operations. Curiously, the terms intelligence, CIA,
DIA, and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) do not appear in the index, but they
appear frequently in the text. It is here that the authors describe the Defense
Department's attempt to assume intelligence primacy from the CIA. In this
connection they argue that the judgment of a National Intelligence Council
officer that the degree of contact between al-Qa'ida and Iraq was incidental is
dismissed because DOD had already decided otherwise, with insufficient
evidence. The CIA and DIA analyses regarding WMD are discussed in detail, with
emphasis on Secretary Powell's speech to the UN. The initial reliance on a
suspect defector's claims about biological weapons labs is described, as is the
subsequent decision that it made no difference whether reports were accurate
since the decision to go to war had been made. The consequences of the failure
to account for Saddam's irregular forces that would become the postwar
insurgents, coupled with inaccurate assumptions that the Iraqi army would not
fight, the coalition forces would be received as liberators, and the Iraqi
institutions of government would survive the war, are analyzed in deplorable
detail. COBRA II ends in 2003, with a discussion of the decisions made
to dismantle the Iraqi military and government and the problems that have
occurred since. It is not a pleasant story, but with its devastating
documentation it is one that is hard to challenge.

Hide and Seek: Intelligence, Law Enforcement, and the Stalled War on Terrorist
Finance

The five-year CIA career of onetime operations officer John Cassara ended when he decided, before he received approval to do
so, to tell his fiancé who was not an American citizen, that he worked for the
Agency. He then found a position with the Treasury Department where over the
next 20 or so years, he served in nearly all organizations under its
jurisdiction, including the Secret Service, while sandwiching in a tour at the
State Department. Much of his experience was with Treasury's Financial
Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) where he focused on narcotics
traffickers, arms dealers and money launderers in the United States and
overseas. In Hide and Seek he argues that he learned enough about illegal
money transfer to sever the "life blood of terrorism," but he is short on
details. He does offer suggestions for correcting the deficiencies that allow
al-Qa'ida to use the diamond and opium trades and various banking techniques to
acquire the funds they need to support their operations, but these suggestions
also lack specificity. The book does provide a good generic explanation of the
no-documentation technique of transferring money—the practice of hawala
used by al-Qa'ida. But Cassara fails to indicate how the process can be
monitored, stopped, or controlled. The best that can be said of Hide and Seek
is that the book identifies some serious problems, but they are not new. That
is not surprising when one discovers his documentation is a mix of secondary
sources, government studies, interviews, and personal experience. He concludes
by recommending "new investigative tools for the War on Terrorist Finance," but
he doesn't identify them. In short he lists well-known problems without
providing specific solutions. As a result, the book is not as helpful as it
might have been.

House
of War: The
Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power

In his prologue, author James Carroll asks, "What
does the Pentagon mean, actually, to the United States of America?" Some 500
pages later the question remains unanswered. Only the author's tortured
obsession with this building as a metaphor for evil is crystal clear. Carroll's
claim that his views should matter are summed up in the assertion that "I have
the eyes of a soldier's son, through which, unfortunately, I see everything."
(xiv) But this statement is inaccurate. Carroll's father, Joseph, was not a
soldier. He was, in 1947, one day a senior FBI special agent and the next an
air force brigadier general. Brigadier General Carroll first headed the Office
of Special Investigations (OSI) and in 1962, as a lieutenant general, became
the first director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). But by that time
son James, a one time ROTC cadet, had become a dedicated anti-war activist
permanently estranged from his father. Young Carroll subsequently became a
Catholic priest, then a family man, novelist, and newspaper columnist. These
are the eyes that explain the views in this often spiteful book.

House of War does provides unique insight into the
life of the father and the origins of DIA. Carroll, the instant air force
general, overcame deep-seated resentment from his fellow flag officers to
establish an effective institution that, inter alia, stood fast when its
estimates on the Vietnam War proved unpopular and played an important role in
the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book also gives a short description of the origins
of the Pentagon itself. But, it quickly emerges that Carroll's focus is on
blaming the Pentagon and its culture of power for everything from the
unnecessary World War II policy of unconditional surrender andthe
unforgivable use of the atom bomb, to equal, if not greater, responsibility for
the Cold War than the Soviet Union. Thus, he concludes, the Pentagon is
responsible for other avoidable wars—Korea, Vietnam, and the war on terror.

In many cases Carroll attempts to buttress his assertions with references to intelligence. For example, concerning the
possible cooperation with the Soviet Union on the use of atomic power in the
late 1940s, Carroll claims that Stalin, based on reports from his agents Donald
Maclean and Kim Philby, "had secret intelligence that the US initiatives toward
cooperation were duplicitous." (167) But the sources he cites for this claim do
not address the issue. This is designer history and is characteristic of a book
that also claims "the Red Army's terror tactics were duplicated by the British
and Americans, but impersonally, without the heat of passion and overt sadism."
On this point no references at all are indicated.(494)

In sum, House of War ascribes the evils of
post-war Western society to power improperly exercised by those in the
five-sided building in Arlington, Virginia—"the Pentagon has, more than ever,
become a place to fear." (511) Fortunately, these assessments are not supported
by his facts. Read with care.

Open
Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack

We have "taken care of" aviation as a threat in
the years since the last attack, according to an administration spokesman cited
in Clark Ervin's book. (211) Ervin, former inspector general of the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), doesn't believe it. (211) He does believe that "it
is still just as easy today to sneak guns, knives and bombs past airport
screeners as it was in 2001 and . . . al-Qa'ida continues to consider new and novel methods
for planning and conducting attacks against the United States." (212) All of a
single chapter is devoted to explaining why. The balance of the book examines
every facet of homeland security: port, mass transit, infrastructure targets,
customs and borders addressed since 9/11. The conclusions are the same. While
some progress has been made, albeit wastefully, and it is harder for terrorists
to attack now than it was five years ago, he argues persuasively that it is
still much easier than it should be. Unable to convince his superiors of the
urgency of correcting well-documented technical and bureaucratic deficiencies,
and having made no secret of his judgments about the overabundance of
mismanagement and old fashioned incompetency, Irvin resigned after two years on
the job.

Ervin ends with a chapter offering suggestions
for "closing the vulnerability gap," but none are original. He concludes that
we need to do the things DHS was chartered to do three years ago. This is a
frustrating, even frightening, but important book.

Covert and Overt: Recollecting and Connecting
Intelligence Service and Information Science

This collection of 17 articles covers many
aspects of intelligence and information science from World War II to the
present as practiced in the British and American military and civilian
intelligence services. There are chapters on the use of open sources and the
problems associated with estimates based on incomplete data. Two chapters cover
the literature of intelligence and information sciences. Another deals with the
problem of defining intelligence itself, but no conclusions are reached, and the
official definition in Executive Order 12333 is ignored. The final papers
explain how the intelligence requirements of an analyst differ from those of
scholars and scientists and discuss the early application of computer
technology to intelligence, though the material here is outdated. Gently
thought provoking.

The
Craft of Intelligence

The first edition of Craft of Intelligencewas published in 1963; the second followed in 1965, with additional
comments on cases made public in the interim. The current edition is identical
to the second. Despite the chronological disparity, the book is an easy read
and excellent introduction to the profession, as it deals with both the history
and functional aspects of the topic. Beginning with intelligence in Biblical
times, it is later illustrated from the author's personal experience as it
surveys the field down into the 1960s. There is a chapter on
counterintelligence, a very valuable one on myths and mishaps, as well as
chapters on the analysis and collection functions, intelligence and policy
makers in the Cold War, and the legal aspects of espionage. While the emphasis
is on Soviet espionage, the principles are consistent with today's threats.
Although Dulles went over various manuscript drafts, the book was written by a
group of retired CIA officers headed by Howard Roman.[2] The group included Roman's wife, Jane,
and Walter Pforzheimer. It is definitely the best book on intelligence written
by a committee.

Compiling a comprehensive annotated bibliography
is labor intensive and time consuming in any area of study. The topic of
deception compounds the problem because it is dependent on a number of
overlapping fields: counterintelligence, analysis, forensic science, cognitive
psychology, police investigation, magic, surprise, and political-military
theory, to name a few. Dr. Barton Whaley's epic Detecting Deception,
with its 2,444 entries covering books, magazines, journals, and various reports
is a unique, extremely valuable, and often (to the newcomer) surprising
contribution to the field.[3] In the surprising category, see for example, the entries for actor and
illusionist Orson Wells.

Beyond identifying works published, there are two
primary benefits to be derived from the bibliography. The first is the
star-rating system assigned, 0-5, 5 being among the best contributions to
deception. Perhaps more important is the second, Whaley's candid, incisive, and
robust opinions; they will save the reader considerable time. The organization
of the bibliography is strictly and intentionally alphabetical. Whaley has not
created a table of contents or listed books by category. This would mean
multiple entries because so many books cover more than one field. It would also
limit browsing, something he wishes to encourage. Many annotations include an
indication of where the less well-known or more rare items may be found (the
"LOC" entry). Entries vary in length from a page or more to short one-paragraph
statements. Second, opinions from reviewers are often quoted and cited, and
related fields of interest are indicated. In all but 71 cases in which he
relied on an expert in the field, Whaley examined the item himself.

This digital book has three other valuable
features: a list of other related, some distantly, bibliographies, and two
appendices. Appendix A is a list of 184 public exhibitions of fake, forged,
counterfeit and otherwise deceptive documents. Appendix B lists 159 conferences
on the topics included in appendix A.

If the bibliography has a weakness, it is the
absence of any keywords in the entries to guide the reader. A code such as CI
(counterintelligence) in a keyword field would focus the search to entries on
the topic. An attempt to deal with this problem appears in the section "In Lieu
of an Index," but it is only partially successful.

For those interested in denial and deception the
Whaley bibliography is a gateway contribution, the place to start.

Intelligence:
From Secrets to Policy

The second edition of this introduction to the
Intelligence Community was published in 2000. With all that has occurred since,
it is not unreasonable to expect the third edition to be a major revision. That
is what Professor Lowenthal has given us! Seventy more pages, two more
chapters, numerous changes and emendations throughout the text, along with new
organizations, the impact of reforms, shifting priorities, and the like. As an
introductory text, this book gives the reader an understandable functional view
of the national Intelligence Community. It lays out the fundamental missions,
the organizational participants, tells what they should do, how they are
related, and the general constraints under which they function. At the outset
the author makes clear that he intentionally avoids the how-to details
of the profession which are covered nicely elsewhere.

The two new chapters deal with intelligence
reform and foreign intelligence services. The former anticipates some of the
difficulties foreseen in that area and since encountered in practice. The
foreign intelligence services chapter describes only five nations—Britain,
France, China, Israel, and Russia—but the references list reliable Web sites
that discuss the services of most other countries. Changes in basic chapter
content include descriptions of the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, the Under Secretary for Defense for Intelligence, and the
Department of Homeland Security. All that and it is still not up-to-date as the
author acknowledges; only a constantly revised digital version can accomplish
that. For many years teachers and students clamored for a basic intelligence
text. Now we have it.

Historical

French
Covert Action in the American Revolution

That France provided clandestine support to the
United States during the War of Independence has long been recognized by
historians of the period.[4] Questions about how the relationship was initiated, when it began, the types of
materials involved, and the impact it had on the war effort, have been matters
of speculation. Working in the French government archives on the American
revolution, scholar and former CIA officer James Potts found the answers among
documents that had never been translated. French Covert Action in the
American Revolution tells the story. The covert action involved was against
the British, not the Americans. Its purpose was to weaken Britain by helping
create a power that would make it less likely that the British would make war
on France. After the Declaration of Independence, the French foreign minister,
the Comte de Vergennes dispatched a representative to Philadelphia to assess
America's determination and the need for warmaking materials. Convinced of
American resolve and the acute shortage of weapons and gunpowder, France created
a "proprietary" that met these needs for the first two years of the war. Potts
shows that without this help Washington could not have sustained his army in
the field until the critical battle of Saratoga, a battle won with materials
supplied by France.

The British were aware of what the French were
doing; their secret service had penetrated the new American mission in Paris.
In telling this part of the story, Potts introduces us to some familiar players
in Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, double-agent Edward Bancroft, and the
Chevalier Charles-Geneviève de Beaumont d'Eon. Franklin and de Vergennes
maintained the fiction that the French government was not involved. At the same
time, Deane worked with French playwright and covert action operator, Pierre-Augustine
Caron de Beaumarchais to arrange supplies. Bancroft, Franklin's secretary and
an agent of the British Secret Service, reported on events, but he never could
establish an official connection to the French that would justify a British
military response—this despite his knowledge that the French were supporting
American privateers that ravaged "English shipping… in the years before France
openly entered the war" after Saratoga. The Chevalier d'Eon, the French officer
who had masqueraded as a women in the Russian and British courts, was also a
British agent who tried to upset the operation by blackmailing the French over
incriminating papers he had stolen.

After the war, the principals did not all fare
well. The secrecy arrangements were such that George Washington was unaware of
the French connection, as Congress never revealed the source of his supplies.
As president he refused to repay the "unofficial" debt owed the French.
Beaumarchais and Deane could not document all their transactions through private
lenders, some of whom didn't exist and Beaumarchais' heirs did receive some
compensation in 1838, long after his death. Both were discredited and died in
poverty. D'Eon, after being bought off by Beaumarchais, retreated to Britain,
where his true gender was revealed only in death. Covert actions tend to have
unintended consequences.

French Covert Action in the American Revolution is a very well
documented and well-told treatment of the first covert action involving the
United States.

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh: Unexpected Allies in the War Against Japan

One day in September 1969, I walked past the office of OSS veteran Paul Hoagland and noticed that he was visibly upset—there
were tears in his eyes. Observing my concern, he said that Ho Chi Minh had
died. Having just returned from Vietnam, I was perplexed at his distress. Paul
quietly explained that Ho had not always been an enemy of the United States and
that an OSS medic, Private First Class Hoagland, had saved his life in 1945.
The Ho that Paul described was soft-spoken, kind, polite, thoughtful,
pro-American, and an effective leader, a rather different image from the one I
had acquired. Buena Vista University history professor, Dixee R.
Bartholomew-Feis, tells the Hoagland-Ho part of this story while expanding on
the wartime links between OSS and Ho's Vietnamese faction. This is not the
first time the relationship has been discussed by historians, but it is the
first book devoted to the subject.[5] The mission of the OSS team, designated Deer, was to work with the Vietnamese and conduct sabotage, intelligence collection,
and morale operations against the Japanese in Indochina. While it might be
expected that with the end of the war in view, cooperation from all
anti-Japanese participants in the region would have been smooth and effective,
Professor Bartholomew-Feis leaves no doubt whatever that the reality was
otherwise. OSS conflicts with the colonialist French were the most frustrating,
but an American naval officer was a close second, and even the British and
Chinese created supply and subordination problems as they too jockeyed for
advantageous postwar positions. The anti-OSS desk barons in Washington were
equal-time contributors to the dissension.

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh describes these
circumstances and the field operations with their limited successes, their
predictable failures, and the long-term consequences. Bartholomew-Feis also
tells of the differing viewpoints of the field and Washington when it came to
wartime and postwar support of Ho and Indochina. The decisions were not clear
cut, she argues. Many viewed him as a dedicated communist. Recommendations from
the field, where the tendency was to obstruct if not ignore headquarters, were
inconsistent. The tendency in Washington, especially after President Roosevelt
died, was to take the path of least resistance and support the colonialist
aspirations of wartime ally France. This policy assured French support in
Europe and in the formation of the United Nations. In the event, when Ho was
ignored he turned to the only other alternative, and the rest is familiar
history. In her otherwise very well documented study, Professor
Bartholomew-Feis concludes with some speculation about what might have happened
had US policy been otherwise. Perhaps Paul's view of Ho as a potential ally was
right.

OVERTHROW:
America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

"The United States has assumed the right to
intervene anywhere in the world, not simply by influencing or coercing foreign
governments but also by overthrowing them." (3) With this premise clearly
established, author Stephen Kinzer commences his assessment of "regime change,"
a term he applies retroactively to US foreign policy since the Hawaiian
revolution in 1893. The book is divided into three parts: the "Imperial Era,"
roughly the period 1893–1945; the "Covert Action" era from Iran (1953) to the
Reagan presidency; and the "Invasions," Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, and
Afghanistan and Iraq. Kinzer gives examples in each part to support his
proposition that regime change generally progresses as follows. First, US firms
experience commercial difficulty functioning in a country. Second, they
persuade the US government to apply political pressure on the country to
resolve the problem in the company's favor. Third, failing political success,
the United States resorts to forceful liberation or regime change and solves
the immediate issue while simultaneously creating long-term, unintended, though
predictable, negative consequences. The CIA is the nefarious manager in the
final two parts. Kinzer does not identify terrorism as a potential cause of
necessary regime change, dismissing it as the product of "fateful misjudgment
by five presidents." (275)

OVERTHROW doesn't contain new facts—it is based entirely
on secondary sources. Kinzer's contribution is the summary of well-known covert
action operations in a single volume and his attempt to establish policy links,
followed by conclusions. He is less successful in accomplishing the second than
the first. If there be a common thread linking all regime-change operations, it
is not apparent—not even commercial interests explain all. Likewise, his
conclusion that America is "singularly unsuited to ruling foreign lands" (309)
ignores the fact that it never set out to do that. Other conclusions reflect
his own views more than the data he presents, as for example, his assertion
that the idea behind all the invasions he discusses is "that Americans have the
right and even the obligation to depose regimes they consider evil…. [this is]
one of the oldest and most resilient of all the beliefs that define the United
States." (302)

No one can argue that the events Kinzer cites did
not take place. But at the same time, there is no evidence that the regime
changes he alleges were "simply a substitute for thoughtful foreign policy
[and that] in most cases diplomatic and political approaches would have worked
far more effectively." (320; emphasis added) There is a barely latent
malevolence in this book. Kinzer doesn't approve of covert action but despite
his best efforts, he has not succeeded in justifying its demise.

To
Dare and To Conquer: Special Operations and the Destiny of Nations from
Achilles to Al Qaeda

No matter how elevated the position of the
claimer, nothing can be reinvented! But things can be rediscovered, and that,
according to the onetime Marine and now Georgetown professor Derek Leebaert,
has been the case with specialoperations. In To Dare and To Conquer he chronicles the origins and development of such operations from the Greeks
and their Trojan horse to modern era American Special Forces units, the CIA
special operations teams, and Islamist terrorists with their sacrificial
passion. In between, he covers all the major wars and confrontations
traditionally described by historians in terms of battles fought by armies,
navies, and air forces, supplying the lesser known contributions of special
operations. He argues persuasively that while the vocabulary so common today
"is barely a century old… the activities of special warfare…are as old as
civilization." (9) His first chapter spends considerable time discussing what
constitutes special operations today and the characteristics of the personnel
who conduct them. Special operations, he demonstrates, originate from necessity
and require personnel possessing ingenuity, daring, a willingness to accept
risks, and skill in the methods of special warfare.[6] Throughout the book we find examples
of the special units required to conduct these operations, including Vikings,
soldiers of Wellington's Peninsula Campaign, the Soviet Spetsnaz, the British
SOE, the American OSS, and their post-war successors.

Successful examples of special operations include
the British victory in "removing Napoleon from Egypt," (314) their role in the
Boer War, Cortez's defeat of the Aztecs, their application by Britain's Long
Range Desert Group in World War II, the assassination of Admiral Yamamoto
in the Pacific theater of that same war, after which "the Japanese never
won another naval battle," and the rapid insertion of CIA teams into
Afghanistan in 2001. Special operations don't always go well, professor
Leebaert writes. Examples, with their reasons, include the attempts to rollback
the Soviets in Eastern Europe after Hitler's defeat, their use in the Korean
war, and in North Vietnam, and the failure to use special operations before
9/11, despite multiple indications of al-Qa'ida's intent. Then there are the
problems created by bureaucratic infighting and the conflicts between high-ranking
military and civilians that resulted in the failure to follow up the
opportunity to get Usama bin Laden when he was trapped in Tora Bora.

To Dare and To Conquer is a vast undertaking.
For those concerned with military history it offers much—often in the form of
lessons not learned—on a subject not dealt with in this magnitude elsewhere.
And, atypically for historical treatments, the role of intelligence is a major
factor throughout. Those concerned with this aspect of the issue have genuine
reasons for concern if Professors Leebaert's assessment that our current
special operations capabilities "will take much more than the declared five
years, if ever, to rebuild." (591) Superbly documented and well written, this
book deserves studied attention.

The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for
the Third World

The operational material former KGB Colonel
Vasili Mitrokhin brought with him from Russia in 1992 was initially viewed with
skepticism by some academic critics because they could not have access to the
documents cited in the endnotes. Two approaches to this question of source
validation soon put the matter to rest—one traditional, one not. The
traditional way involved comparison with existing and newly released material
in which the Mitrokhin data confirmed earlier assessments and, in other cases,
filled gaps. The unusual, and to some extent unexpected, way involved
interviews with people who were directly involved and who admitted their
heretofore unacknowledged roles as agents. The most shocking example was the
case of octogenarian Melita Norwood, the longest serving and most important
female British KGB agent. When asked by the press about the claims in the book,
Ms. Norwood quickly stepped forward and proudly admitted her role. It is all
true, she said, and under the same conditions, "I would do it again. I thought
I had got away with it."[7] From then on Mitrokhin was taken seriously.

Mitrokhin brought out so much material that it
had to be published in two volumes; this is the second. The first book focused
on KGB operations in the West. This one looks at four geographic regions: Latin
America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. In the foreword, coauthor
Christopher Andrew presents new details of Mitrokhin's early life, his KGB
career, the reasons for his defection, and other personal data that could not
be presented while Mitrokhin was still alive.

Each of the four geographic parts of the book begins with an introduction wherein Professor Andrew describes the political
circumstances of the period concerned and lays out the often surprising role
the KGB played in promoting Soviet foreign policy in the region. In the
substantive portions of the book Mitrokhin's files portray KGB activities in
the Third World in great detail. Of particular interest is the extent and
variety of KGB forgery and disinformation operations. Clearly, the Soviets
intended to spread communism in third world countries as a step towards
achieving their goal of a worldwide communist state—they said so unequivocally.
Many of the cases are familiar from evidence collected and published by Western
intelligence services. Cuba is an example, though new details are added, as for
example the role of Raul Castro in gaining Soviet support. The chapters on
India, on the other hand, discuss KGB support for some important Indian leaders
and the extent to which the government had been penetrated. These specifics
were new, at least to the Indians, and caused a major flap. Stories about how
the KGB recruited political figures and influenced policy were in the local
papers for weeks.

There is extensive detail about KGB operations in
Nicaragua and Africa, where in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviets
publicly denied attempting to apply any influence. These claims were believed
by many in America. The KGB role in Afghanistan is particularly interesting, as
are the attempts to influence Egypt and Iraq. In the case of Vietnam, where the
Soviets kept a low profile, what they told the North Vietnamese left no doubt
as to their long-term goals. In 1980, KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov told the
Vietnamese interior minister that "the Soviet Union is not merely talking about
world revolution but is actually assisting it…. Why did the USA and the other
Western countries agree on détente in the 1970s and then change their policies?
Because the imperialists realized that a reduction of international tension
worked to the advantage of the socialist system. During this period, Angola,
Mozambique, Ethiopia and Afghanistan were liberated." (471) This was the
distorted KGB view of Soviet reality.

In retrospect, it is hard to comprehend that anyone
in the Soviet government really thought they were ever on the road to making
the world communist. Volume one shows how hard they tried to subvert the West.
Volume two leaves no doubt that the KGB made an even greater attempt to achieve
this goal by subverting Third World nations. And almost until the end they
believed that the world was really going their way.

Intelligence Around the World

Historical
Dictionary of Israeli Intelligence

The track record for the historical intelligence
dictionary series from Scarecrow Press is mixed. The first volume on British
intelligence, by Nigel West, is quite good. The second, on US intelligence, by Michael
Turner, is dreadful.[8] The latest volume, written by Israeli scholar Ephraim Kahana is worthwhile. It
has useful case summaries, but it is incomplete in surprising areas. For
example, the description of the "Lillehammer incident" in Norway, where an
innocent man was mistakenly assassinated, doesn't describe the incriminating
data revealed by the captured assassins. With regard to the entry on convicted
Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard, Kahana fails to mention Pollard's lies about his
academic record and that he had been rejected by the CIA (which the Navy didn't
learn about until his arrest). Nor does Kahana mention the classified material
on China found in Pollard's apartment or the fact that his wife Anne had made
her own approaches to the Chinese government. Kahana is candid about Pollard's
operational errors and, despite claims to the contrary on 60 Minutes,
states flatly that "economic motivation was of the utmost importance to
Pollard." (233) The entry on James Angleton ends with the curious statement
that "after Angleton's dismissal in 1975 [sic: 1974], the liaison unit (with
the Mossad) was dismantled." (13) On the other hand, there is new information
on some cases, as for example the Mordechai Louk spy-in-the-diplomatic-trunk
incident. Similarly, the domestic security service, often called Shin Bet, is
discussed under its formal name, the Israeli Security Agency (SHABAK). There is
a very useful chronology describing the evolution of the various Israeli
intelligence services and the officers that headed them. The introduction is a
valuable summary of how Israeli intelligence operates, citing missions,
failures, oversight, the importance of HUMINT, and a look to the future.
Overall this is a valuable reference book.

Man
in the Shadows: Inside the Middle East Crisis with a Man Who Led the Mossad

Efraim Halvey. (New York: St. Mars Press, 2006), 292 pp., index.

The author was a career Mossad officer who headed
the service from 1998 to 2002. The first 10 chapters concern his views on
Israel's political problems since its creation and leave the reader wondering
about Halvey's Mossad role. Only in the final chapters does he describe
intelligence operations in which he was involved, abortive assassination
attempts in Jordan being the most important. He spends considerable space
describing the problems that arise when the political masters, in his case
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attempt to manage operations directly. He
includes comments on the organization of Mossad, other heads of state with whom
the author had contact, and the difficulties of providing intelligence to the
boss when it could have adverse political impact.

On present events, Halvey admits Mossad was
caught by surprise on 9/11. He goes on to support the war on terror and
Washington's current approach. On a personal note, he compares the working
relationship with the CIA's James Angleton, when he handled the Mossad account
many years ago, with the more recent experience under DCI George Tenet. He
concludes with a depressing assessment that suggests the world has yet to see
the worst that radical Islamists have to offer. Halvey leaves the impression
that he has more to say.

Profiles of Intelligence

Brigadier Syed Tirmazi was born in Rawalpindi,
Pakistan, and attended the University of the Punjab before being commissioned
an artillery officer. After attendance at the Intelligence Bureau School and
the School of Military Intelligence, he held positions in Pakistan's
Intelligence Bureau, eventually serving as its directorate general, and the
Inter Services Intelligence (analogous to the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence in the United States), interspersed with a tour as Army
attaché in Tehran during the Iran-US hostage crisis. For reasons not entirely
made clear, he took early retirement in 1985 and wrote this book some 10 years
later.

Tirmazi employs the word "profiles" in the sense
of case summary or study. At first he summarizes his career and outlines the
Pakistani intelligence structure generally. Then he turns to intelligence in
five geographic areas: the United States, India, Libya, Israel, and Iran, and
three functional topics: the threat to Islam (from the West and India),
domestic security, and the problems stemming from political corruption. In each
area he describes counterintelligence cases, his specialty. Although somewhat
admiring of "imperialist" America, he is critical of what he perceives as the
CIA role in various changes of governments. He asserts that US post-war
policies with regard to Iran resulted in the hostage crisis. In his judgment,
had the rescue operation reached Tehran, all the hostages would have been
killed. He also claims Pakistan was very much aware of US interest in the
Pakistani nuclear program and thus managed to avoid attempts to close it down.
He is candid about the high quality of the Israeli services but leaves no doubt
as to his political views: "Most ills that have enveloped the world today can
be traced back to Tel Aviv…." (225) Without explanation, the chapter on the KGB
in Pakistan is only five pages long and says little.

Counterintelligence and security
operations—defections and agent recruitments—are described in each chapter.
Tirmazi argues that despite limits imposed by initially primitive technology,
the basic espionage techniques were still effective, as illustrated in his
discussion of the "Mata Hari from India"case. In a more general sense,
he provides valuable insights into the cultural and the practical problems to
be faced when dealing with the Muslims generally, and the Pakistani services in
particular. Of special concern, although it is an underlying theme throughout
the book, is the unsolved problem of attempts to shape intelligence for
political purposes. The final chapters deal with lessons learned and with the
author's views for the future. This book is a valuable contribution.

[6]On the topic of personnel recruitment Professor Leebaert makes an odd—seemingly
incongruous—and unexplained assertion that American "special forces personnel
are recruited from the ranks of civilian amateurs."

All
statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article are
those of the author. Nothing in the article should be construed as
asserting or implying US government endorsement of an article's factual
statements and interpretations.

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